Live it up

My theme for this year’s
Blogging from A to Z Challenge is called the
Click here to read more about it.
***
Today’s words are
‘Live it up
  which mean to spend one’s time in an extremely enjoyable way,
typically by being extravagant or engaging in an exciting social life.
Source: http://pixabay.com/

Carrie took in a deep breath as she forced her eyes to remain open.  A few more moments to go before she would bid adieu to this lifetime. A lifetime that swam across her blurry eyelids drooping heavy with death lingering over them with a stopwatch. Close family members and friends flocked around her in the hospital room where she lay with needles and pipes poked into her body. Her eyes searched for her sons and her husband. There they were, looking at her with a faraway look in their eyes, as though they were weary from the whole ordeal of her illness and wanted to get done with her.

What was Kylie doing here? She never really liked that woman. Not that Kylie had ever tried to offend her knowingly. It was just that she couldn’t accept Kylie’s spirited attitude in everything she did. The bold manner in which she dressed, the non-confirming lifestyle she maintained and the happiness she exuded made her uncomfortable in a weird way. All this while she could never fathom her dislike for Kylie. But now as time was running out, she realized that all the qualities that Kylie possessed were exactly what she herself wished to have in her. But self-conscious as Carrie was, she just couldn’t muster the courage to be what she wanted to be.
Ah, so that was why she had scorned when Kylie had flown off to another country to learn a new dance form! “Weren’t there enough things to pursue here in our own country?” she had thought to herself back then. But now it occurred to her that it was probably related to her frustration at being unable to go for her own passion for fashion designing since her parents did not approve of her going out of their little town to study a subject that wasn’t taught close to home. Thus, she settled on studying finance, in spite of having no interest in the subject at all.
And again, when Kylie started traveling to perform for dance shows around the globe, leaving her two kids behind in the care of her mother, she had yet again looked down at Kylie’s lack of motherly instincts. But surprisingly Kylie’s kids grew up to be proud of her. And also as talented as her. While she could sense that her own kids found her boring and directionless, in spite her being by their side all through their growing years. She now realized that she never really gave herself the time she should have rightfully given for her own interests which had her breathing down the necks of her kids all the time, which eventually they started resenting. She turned out to be an over protective mother, who discouraged her kids in their quest for adventures, thereby not letting their personalities bloom spontaneously.
While Kylie did not make as much money as Carrie with the dance classes that she conducted for her living, she seemed to to have all the time in the world to catch up on exciting escapades and lazy vacations. Carrie would secretly snigger at Kylie’s lack of a secure job. Although she herself had a stable and secure bank job, it left her tired and unfulfilled and also with no time for herself. She was making money but could never enjoy the money.
Lastly, she had shaken her head in disbelief when Kylie had walked out of her marriage of twenty five years to live in with a new person she had met on a trip abroad. A foreigner. How dumb could she be? Giving up a companion of so many years to settle with a person who’s culture she knew nothing about. But turned out it was the best decision Kylie had taken coz’ in no time she had lost her ex-husband to alcoholism despite all her attempts to pull him out of his habits. In the years that followed she radiated with happiness in spite of her ripe age in the company of her new partner who’s company seemed to have done her good. While Carrie had put up with her own abusive marriage, all these years just coz’ it seemed to be the right thing to do. She gave in to all the physical abuse that her husband had meted on her for the sake of her kids and a secure life. A life for which neither her kids nor her husband had respect for.
Actually Kylie was all that Carrie was as a young girl. Kylie throughout her life continued to do all that Carrie had done in her younger days, without an afterthought about the consequences for doing something she liked. She just went on following her heart all through her life. While Carrie had stopped living hers somewhere down the line.
Now Carrie craved for those days back in college when she was carefree and could laugh merrily with her girl friends without a worry in the world. She wished she had explored the by lanes of Paris and indulged the fashionista in her.  She wished to have climbed the mountains, gone trekking with her kids. She wished to have taken off on a cruise with the handsome hunk who worked in her bank, who had the hots for her back then. She wished she had strolled through the sunny woods chasing butterflies rather than counting stiff currency notes on her staid desk under cold white light. She wished for all those things that she never did but secretly wished to have done. Too late now. Her lashes rested slowly as the last grain of sand trickled through the hourglass.The time was up.
Nothing lasts forever,
So live it up
Drink it down,
Laugh it off,
And never have regrets
Because at one point everything you did
Was exactly what you wanted.
~Marilyn Monroe


 

Linking this to the Blogging from A to Z (April 2015) for the letter L.